


Anchor

by morganya



Category: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-02-06
Updated: 2004-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-10 13:09:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganya/pseuds/morganya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He never says no.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anchor

Thom crashes at Ted's place sometimes. They don't have a set schedule or anything; it just seems to happen, Thom out late, in the neighborhood, and for one reason or another the short drive back to his place seems like a monstrous undertaking. And so he calls, and Ted answers, every time.

He knows, or hopes he knows, that it would be easy enough for Ted to say no, sorry Thom, it's too late, not tonight, and it would be easy enough for him to say oh, that's cool, see you tomorrow then.

But Ted never says no to him. Thank God.

So he goes to Ted's apartment, where the lights are always blazing, even at three in the morning, and Ted bustles around getting sheets and pillows, moaning gently about the size of the couch and how he _knows_ it's not going to be comfortable and Thom laughs and says, "It's fine, it's fine," and Ted grumbles and plumps the pillow with two hands.

Ted doesn't sleep well; maybe that's why he's always up when Thom calls. "Just a habit. I figure it started in college, too many late nights."

Thom says, "Well, sorry to tell you this, but you've been out of college for a very, very long time. If it was really a habit, you'd have broken it by now." Ted is five years older than he is. Thom never misses a chance to remind him of that. Ted just rolls his eyes and swats at him without malice.

Ted makes him breakfast the mornings that he's there, if there's time before they both have to take off. Thom staggers into the kitchen, picking bits of sleep out of his eyes, and Ted turns off the stereo, the Replacements cut off in mid-verse, and says, "Fantastic, you can help me chop."

The knife that Ted hands him has a thick wooden handle, a thin flexible blade. Thom looks down at the green onions on the counter. Fragile things, with a coarse feel under his fingertips. He chops them quickly, because he's wondering where on earth Ted picked up that refrigerator, an utter monstrosity that clanks and hums, and it's hard to concentrate on not slicing off his thumb when the kitchen appliances are threatening to explode.

Ted acts oblivious to any impending disaster. He finishes one task and goes onto another with the same laser-beam focus, testing the heat of the stove, getting a potato peeler, inventorying the ingredients already lined up on the counters before choosing the one he wants. There's the barest suggestion of a pause between each action.

"This is what I used to do at grad school," Ted says. He's moved to the sink, scraping potato skin into the garbage disposal with a practiced motion of his wrist. "Get up at dawn, make coffee, completely out of it..."

"And then set the kitchen on fire..."

"Yeah. Call the fire department, leave the house, hope it gets taken care of before I come back." Ted shrugs. "You know. That kind of thing."

"School makes you nuts," Thom says. "Basically." Half of the onions have been reduced to mulch; the other half looks barely chopped at all. He pushes them into a pile; some of the mulch sticks to his fingers and then refuses to come off. "Um. Help."

"What have you done?" Ted finishes peeling and steps around him. "Well, at least you didn't lose a finger. That's good."

"I try."

"Could I get that?" Ted takes the knife from him and fixes the more irregularly shaped onions with two moves. "I'm always amazed that you can turn someone's house around and then be completely bamboozled in the kitchen."

"If I could've just hit these with a hammer, I'd have been fine," Thom says. "It's okay, though, right?"

"Easily repaired." Ted sets the onions aside. Thom leans against the counter and watches him slice the potato in careful, measured cuts. Ted's hands are almost too large for his wrists, the veins thick and ropy.

"I wanted to get Yukon Gold," he says, stopping the knife for a second, poking a potato cube with his index finger. "They're sweeter. Plus you don't need to peel them, which is a big pain in the ass when you really think about it. I think I just grabbed the russet ones because it was getting late and I didn't want to hang around the store searching for tubers."

"You've given this _way_ too much thought."

Ted smiles. "We all have our little quirks."

"Ted, I think you've been spending a little too much time alone."

"I think I'd have done the same thing even if someone'd been with me." Ted slides the potatoes into the oil on the stove. "Need some sort of stirring implement..."

Thom takes advantage of the pause to step behind him. He puts his hands on Ted's shoulders and peers at the stove. "I thought you'd have all your spoons and things, like, alphabetized. Lined up in front of you. In little tiny vacuum-sealed bags."

Ted, his choreography interrupted, gropes to the side of the stove, opens a drawer. Thom doesn't move. His fingers tap on Ted's clavicle.

"It's so disorganized, it's driving me nuts," Ted says. "Where'd all my stuff..."

"Oh my God, Ted, it's fine."

"These are going to burn."

"Not unless you have it turned up to five thousand degrees." Thom clasps his hands together over Ted's chest, gently, carefully.

"I haven't even gotten the eggs ready." Ted drops his chin onto Thom's hands.

"I think it can wait."

"Eh," Ted says. He clasps Thom's wrist gently, then lets go. He disentangles himself from Thom's too-loose grasp and gives the potatoes a stir. "You want toast, too? I've got toast."

Thom waits until the dishes have been loaded into the dishwasher (another eyesore, Ted really needs to talk to him about plans for the apartment) and Ted has turned off the coffee maker to remember that he needs to leave. So he hugs Ted goodbye and says, "See you at work," and Ted says, "Be careful."

The dog tackles Thom as soon as he walks in the door. He kneels down, crooning, and Paco's breath really could not be any worse but Thom lets himself be licked anyway. "Bad dad, you've got a bad dad."

He gets up and goes to look for the leash. He thinks he left it in the bedroom, except maybe it was the living room and he's just lost his mind. Paco trots after him as he goes from room to room.

His cell phone rings just after he's located the leash in the kitchen. Thom sandwiches the phone between his shoulder and his ear and says, "Hello?" Paco decides he doesn't want to go out, after all, and backs away when Thom tries to put the leash on.

"Thom, there's a problem." It was Anne, one of his assistants at the design firm.

"What's the problem?"

"The desks came in. For the Regency Hotel."

"Yeah..." Thom catches hold of Paco's collar, affixes the leash.

"They're not cherrywood. They're maple. The manager just called me, he yelled at me when I told him."

Thom covers the mouthpiece and groans. "Okay. That happens again, tell whoever it is to call me, I'll deal with it."

"He's saying that he doesn't want maple desks. He said it's going to be all wrong."

"Okay, first of all, it's not, and second of all, I'll call him tonight. And I'll call...who'd we commission the desks from?"

"I don't remember."

The other phone, the one in the living room, starts ringing. Thom ignores it. Paco wriggles away from him and goes to stand by the window. "Can you find that out for me?"

"Yeah."

He's going to sit down and have a nice chat with Anne about her attitude once this is over.

"I'm thinking it's probably just some confusion on the shipping. I'll deal with it."

"What if it's not?"

"Then they'll get the desks a little later than they want."

His answering machine picks up; one of the production people, Tony or Charlie or someone. "Thom, just got a call from Raffinatezza. They're not sure they want the cameras in the store. Um, actually, they're not sure they want to be on the show, after all. So if you have any ideas about another store, that'd be great..."

"I'm going to check in again in two hours," Thom says to Anne, filing the Raffinatezza problem away with the rest. "If the Regency people call again, just forward it to me. A maple desk isn't going to slaughter the hotel trade in the long run. And get the guy's name for me, the..."

"I'll find it."

"Great." Thom hangs up. Paco spots something out the window and barks. Loudly and repeatedly.

Thom runs through all the stores he knows, all the people he could call in favors from for the show, if he could call the guy at Raffinatezza and charm him into changing his mind. He goes through all the possible names he considered while he was commissioning desks for the Regency, the name he finally decided on, something that began with 'A,' he thinks, Jesus Christ, what was it...

He picks up the leash, tugging his still-barking dog towards the door, and wishes he could make time stop for just two seconds.

He supposes that's why he keeps ending up out too late, too far from his apartment, and why he keeps winding up at Ted's, where time might as well not exist.

Thom knows the pattern intimately. He knows that sooner or later he will get up from the couch and climb the modified ladder to the upper loft and Ted's bedroom. The lights will be off; he has to concentrate very hard on not bumping into something.

When he enters the bedroom he will hear Ted's breathing change, a slow, soft exhalation. No words. And then it always goes like this.

He gets into Ted's bed without so much as a 'move over,' reaches for him across the cotton sheets, and Ted says quietly, "Having nightmares, Thomas?"

And he strokes Ted's face as though it's an answer to the question, running his thumb over the ridge of Ted's cheekbone.

"Thom -"

"Mmm?"

Silence. He always expects Ted to go on. But instead Ted grabs his wrist and kisses his palm. Thom pulls him into his arms, and Ted murmurs meaningless sounds against his shoulder. When Thom smoothes down the thin, weathered skin of his belly, Ted holds him like a drowning man.

"Let me stay," Thom whispers, "Christ, Ted, let me _stay_..."

Ted never has an answer for him.

Afterwards, Ted twitches and kicks in his sleep, only quieting when Thom flings an arm over him, pressing him into the mattress.

Sometimes, Thom stays awake until the sun rises, just to watch the light fall on Ted's face.


End file.
